


The Girl Who Loved the Sun

by TheColorBlue



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen, written pre-film release
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 21:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elsa is a creature of the cold, but she still loves warm hugs. </p><p>An exploration into some of the possible practical impacts of Elsa's nature and powers. I try not to discuss major spoiler events directly, but this does take place in the general area of Elsa's childhood and the building of the ice palace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Who Loved the Sun

Elsa has the coldest room in the castle. This isn’t, necessarily, something’s she’s done on purpose, but her skin has always been on the cool side, and then everything seeps out. It’s part of why she layers up. She’s always cold, and she wants to keep the cold in, but sometimes it gets out, especially in the place where she spends most of her time. The cold gets into metal and on the surface of wood and into her blankets and tapestries, and let’s be honest. There’s a secret part of her that doesn’t want to be insulated. Sometimes she wants to take her gloves off. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to jump into the fjord waters naked, lie in it and watch the stars and the northern lights as water crystallizes and breaks apart in every-changing patterns of liquid and solid fractal matter all around her. 

Nobody knows about these kind of scandalous thoughts she has, not even Anna, who would be pretty scandalous herself even without Elsa’s help. Anna runs around the castle, amusing herself with fancy dress-up and climbing on furniture and dusting the staircase banisters with the rear-end of her dress as she slides down. Anna is tiny, but her arms are all muscle; it’s absolutely improper for a princess. 

Elsa sits in her room most days and studies geometry and mathematics, and turns the shapes and numbers and angles over in her head so that they don’t seep out of her fingers, but sometimes they do anyway. Snowflakes will conjure themselves in whirls around her, branching out from the molecules of water in the air, patterning out under her palms. It’s ridiculous. She’s the heir to the throne, she will be the most powerful woman in a prosperous kingdom, and growing up, she’s spent a lot of days just sitting in a corner of her room and crying, and the tears seep out and frost her cheeks, and melt again. It’s like they can’t figure out if they want warmth or cold to keep them together. Elsa is miserable and sad and lonely, and she’s a creature of the cold who really, really wants a warm hug. 

It’s pretty preposterous. 

Some days, she is very good, and then her room has only a faint chill in the air that could just as well be attributed to a window open to the view of the fjord. 

Some days, she is not very good at all, and frost covers every surface of her room like a spiderwork lace. It even freezes over the hinges and seams of the door so that no one could get in, even if they wanted to. It’s part of the reason why nobody is allowed in her room anyway, ever since the accident. No servants, no ladies-in-waiting, and here’s yet another hidden sign of how unsuitable she would be as queen. She cleans and organizes her own room and dresses herself. She hides in her lair like a malevolent sorceress in a fairy story. The only time anyone else gets that close to her is for the tailoring of her clothes, and then she has to be still and concentrate, and not think about how exposed she feels. 

There are always specific instructions regarding the construction of her clothes. They have to be made in such a way that she can dress herself, all simple lines and no elaborate buttons or lacings in the back where she can’t get to them. 

Someday she’s going to start a new fashion, her seamstress jokes, when Her Highness is coronated. All simple lines and elegant beauty. 

Elsa stares at the wall in front of her as her measurements are taken, and she tries not to think about standing in front of the crowds. 

\---

After she runs away and builds her ice palace in the mountains, she stands in the upper room with a ceiling like a cathedral, and she strips naked. It’s pretty terrible, maybe, but she’s feeling wild and reckless and suddenly she’s realizing how much she’s hated the feeling of normal clothing on her body. Cloth traps her, all the wools and velvets and heavy layers, and when she spins herself a dress of ice and flakes of snow—there is a good feeling. A light feeling. If she thinks about it too hard, it’s crazy, it’s horrible—she’s like a witch in a fairy story, or some kind of dangerous spirit, running naked in the wilds. 

She doesn’t feel dangerous, though. Not here, and alone. She doesn’t feel wicked. She doesn’t even—it’s not like there’s some kind of magical transformation that has happened, but now she’s baring her heart, and dressed in an ever-changing and moving gown of her own design, and in a palace that’s like being in the center of a diamond. 

When she breathes out, her breath does not mist in the air. Her breath was never warm, after all. 

She doesn’t give warm hugs. 

She hugs herself and her skin is cool. But she can sit outside on her palace balcony. She watches as the sun rises over the mountains, as the light fractures through the crystalline walls of her palace. She’s a creature of the cold, but she still loves the light, even the heat, of the sun, and she tries not to think too hard then, about what that means, what that says about her, and the fact that she is still lonely, and alone.


End file.
